


open up your plans and damn, you're free

by vaguelyfamiliar



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: (but only vaguely and distantly), 2007-2008 NHL Season, Detroit Red Wings, Gift Giving, I told y'all this was gonna be A Concept, Interns & Internships, Love/Hate, M/M, Not Hockey Players (Hockey RPF), Romantic Comedy, Secret Admirer, but they still revolve around hockey because they are, for none other than the, pigtail-pulling to the extreme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-10-12 02:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20556857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguelyfamiliar/pseuds/vaguelyfamiliar
Summary: No, Sid doesn’t genuinely think it’s his childhood celebrity crush Steve Yzerman making him mixtapes and leaving chocolates on his desk, but he has no idea who it could actually be. Hilary knows he’s gay, Claude hates him, and everyone else hardly talks to him.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Steve Yzerman heading back to Detroit gave me feelings, and I always have feelings about Sid and Claude, so. This ridiculous little thing was born.
> 
> Do NHL hockey clubs even have interns? Yes, some do. Would the work environment at these internships be even remotely as described? I can’t answer these questions. All I know is what is in my heart.
> 
> Title from I'm Yours by Jason Mraz, a trip down memory lane which was released riiiiight around the time period in which this fic takes place.

_ November 2007 - Detroit, Michigan _

Sid comes into work prepared to make today a good day. There’s nothing in particular that would make today better than any other, but it’s all about purpose with these things. He takes a big sip of the coffee in his travel mug, then flashes his employee pass at Joe Louis Arena security. _Sidney Crosby,_ _Player Hospitality Intern_, it reads below a goofy picture of him in which he looks like he has a mullet. So what? He’s got caffeine buzzing through his veins, his hair only sort of looks like a mullet in real life, and today is going to be a great day. The security guard at the Joe knows it too. He smiles at Sid as he lets him by.

“Croz!” Claude crows from his desk when Sid gets to the little bullpen where the interns spend most of their time. Claude only looks this luminescent in the morning if he’s planning on being an especially huge pest. “Boss stopped in a couple minutes ago. She told me to tell you to replace the ink in the copy machine.”

Sid blinks. “You mean she told you to replace the ink in the copy machine, but you don’t want to, so I have to.”

Claude nods, short but proud. “Yeah! And in the spirit of the coming holiday,” he says, jerking his chin at the streamers and cornucopia someone has halfheartedly strewn about their office space in preparation for American Thanksgiving, “I thought I should tell you thanks for being such a pushover. Really, from deep down.”

Sid presses his lips together. Today is going to suck. “Friendly reminder that one of our community standards is to always treat peers with respect,” he tells Claude.

“If you have to say ‘friendly reminder,’ then it’s probably not friendly. Like how saying ‘no offense’ means it’s automatically offensive.”

“Well, no offense,” Sid says, using a tone snippier than he wanted to be using this early in the morning. “But that’s fucking dumb!”

Claude points at him. “See, you got it, just like that.”

Hilary walks into the room then. She takes one look at them and sees how Sid hasn’t even sat down at his desk yet and is gripping the shoulder strap of his satchel too hard, how Claude is tipping his chair back on its hind legs the way he _ knows _ Sid hates. “Oh, not today, you guys. Absolutely not. Or wait, at least let me get coffee first.” And then she disappears from whence she came, likely off to the mini kitchen a few doors down.

Claude thumps his chair back down on all four legs. “You’re such a wet noodle,” he says, standing up to come invade Sid’s space. Sid sits down and gets settled, determined to ignore him. Claude prods at the pen holder on Sid’s desk and asks, “Why are these all red ink?”

“Because don’t touch my shit,” Sid snaps. Ignoring Claude is always harder than it seems.

Claude rolls his eyes. “_Whatever_,” he says, sounding all of fourteen years old. He scampers back to his desk, probably to plot other ways to get on Sid’s nerves. It’s not as if he does much actual work when he’s at work. Instead, he concentrates on trying to make Sid’s dream internship as unbearable for him as possible. While Sid’s booking hotel stays for the team, Claude is tossing balled-up scraps of paper into his hair. While Sid is updating the master list of players’ contact info, Claude is poking his nose over his shoulder so he can prank call whoever the newest trade acquisition is.

The internship is definitely more good than bad, though. Sid still almost never messes up his tasks, and other than Claude, his fellow interns are tolerable. Plus, he gets to rub shoulders with hockey legends on the daily. He passes Head Coach Mike Babcock in the halls. And sometimes, when he’s lucky—

“Yzerman Alert,” Hilary calls from the doorway as she lurches back into the room.

“What? Right now?” Sid yips. She gives him a frantic nod on her way back to her computer, so Sid busies himself on his own, clicking around to try to figure out which window looks like his Most Important Business window. 

As foretold, Steve Yzerman steps in a moment later. He looks sharp in what must be his favorite suit, the gray one Sid sees him wear most frequently. “How’s it going, everyone?” he asks the room, because he makes it a point to check in with all the staff every so often, even the lower-down little people, like the assistant statisticians, the cameramen. The interns. “Hilary, Mark tells me you’re doing well with organizing his scouting reports.”

“Doing my best, sir,” she grins, shooting him a thumbs up.

He shoots her one back, then turns his focus on Sid. “Sidney! Hard at work, I trust. Did your parents enjoy their visit?”

It’s amazing that he remembers Sid mentioning that the last time they saw each other, exactly nine days ago. “They did, Mr. Yzerman,” Sid coughs.

Yzerman waves a hand back and forth like he can swat away Sid’s social formalities. “Remember, kids, call me Steve. Otherwise I start to feel old.” He’s definitely not old. Well, he’s 42, but he only retired from playing a couple years ago. 

“Sure, of course, Steve,” Sid says, shifting in his seat. His elbow accidentally makes contact with his travel mug, knocking it onto its side. He tries to put it to rights, but it wobbles and just topples over again. He leaves it alone this time. 

“Great.” Steve looks around at the rest of the faces present. “Hi Shea, Meghan. Hi…Clyde.”

Claude rolls his eyes heavily and snaps his giant headphones over his ears.

Steve leaves it at that, clears the room to get to all of the essential stuff that a team Vice President/Governor has to do. When he’s gone, Sid slowly picks up his fallen mug and puts it right-side up.

“Nice one,” Claude drawls. 

\---

Claude is the Video Production Intern for the Wings. All he does is edit together the hype videos they play on the arena big screens before the game, or that they post to the team’s new page on The FaceBook, or whatever it’s called. If you ask Sid, Claude’s got probably the least important job of all the interns, but he walks around like he owns the team anyway. He hardly ever seems to be doing actual work and he’s always got on his bulky yellow headphones, which clash horribly with his orange hair. He doesn’t even go to college, Sid is pretty sure, so god only knows what a Canadian kid from backwoods Ontario is doing in an unpaid internship in Detroit, Michigan. At the same time, though, Sid kind of gets it. Rapidly hurtling toward the edge of an economic crisis, Detroit is a struggling, overburdened, trainwreck place for pretty much everything—except hockey.

It’s like this: most of team staff has to be on hand at every home game, so that includes interns. It’s mandated in their job descriptions. They’re meant to be working the whole time, obviously, but pretty much everyone who works for the team is cut from the same cloth, subscribes to the same motto: live and die a fan of the game. He and Claude have that in common, at least.

Once, while he’s supposed to be heading to the players’ kitchen near the locker room to take stock of food supply—the Swedish contingent of the roster goes through lingonberry jam like nobody’s business—Sid passes by an open doorway and Claude’s obnoxious hair catches his attention from within. Claude should be in the control room with the arena’s sound and video techs, but instead he’s here in an empty suite, face pushed up against the glass like a little kid. Sid comes up next to him to tell him off, but then he sees Claude’s face, the rapt attention he’s paying to the ongoing play. On the ice below, Lidstrom makes a perfectly-timed, no-nonsense stretch pass that lands in front of Datsyuk just before he enters the zone on a breakaway, fakes right, dekes left, and waits an unbelievably long time before he finally pops it in right over the goalie’s sinking blocker. 

Claude beams. Yeah, Sid gets it.

\---

Winter in Detroit is incredibly unkind, so Sid tends to dress with that in mind as November wraps up and the cold starts to worsen. He’s learned from having spent a couple years at college that it’s best to start getting used to his heaviest winter clothes as soon as the school break for American Thanksgiving passes. Geno sent him one of those Russian fur hats for his birthday over the summer—Sid hasn’t worn it yet, obviously, and he’s pretty sure it’s more a gag gift than something Geno actually expects him to ever put on his body. But he glances out his tiny apartment window at the slush covering the ground from last night’s snowfall, and then he looks dubiously at where the hat hangs on a hook in his closet. Might as well. 

The thing is super warm. It’s so comfy that Sid all but forgets it’s on his head as he walks into the Joe and makes his way to the bullpen.

The way Claude’s eyes brighten as he enters the room spells trouble. “Hey, Croz. What the hell kind of hat is that?” Sid rips it off—he _ knew _ it looked goofy—and opens his mouth to snipe back at Claude. But before he can, Claude jerks his chin at Sid’s desk. “And what’s that on your desk?” 

Sid does a double-take. Just as Claude said, there’s something right in the center of his desk. It’s a CD in a clear jewel case. _ For: SIDNEY_, it declares in multi-colored Sharpie, with little designs doodled all around his name. 

“Did…you put this here?” Sid asks doubtfully. There’s no one else in the room yet.

Claude rolls his eyes. “If I put it there, I would know what it is.”

Sid feels his lips press together in a flat line. “Okay, well I don’t know either.” He scoops up the CD to take a closer look. There’s no explanation of what it is or who it’s from, nothing but his name and a few drawings, comic book explosions and…are those hearts? Sid stuffs it into his satchel and decides that he’ll figure it out later. He’s got work to do.

\---

Sid pops the CD into the player in his car on the drive back to his apartment, suspecting that it’s a mixtape. He’s right; it’s an eclectic mix of nothing that makes sense together, too much John Mayer with a dash of poppy dance hits and a few country songs. Inexplicably, John Denver’s _ Thank God I’m A Country Boy _ appears as both the third and the ninth track. 

Overall, it’s not terrible. Sid doesn’t know much about music, but he’s humming along by the time he gets back to his apartment. He’s not sure what the purpose of the mixtape is, but it’s kind of nice that someone thought of him.

\---

The next time Sid runs into Steve, they’re both in the hallway mini kitchen that services all the surrounding administrative offices. The coffee machine appears to be broken, so Sid’s debating pretending he has an errand to take care of over in the players’ kitchen, where he _ knows _ the coffee machine is working. 

“Having trouble?” Steve asks from behind him, and Sid nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Oh! Sir, um, Steve. Hi. Yes,” Sid stammers. 

Steve frowns in the general direction of the machine. “Here, let me take a look.” So Sid sidesteps to give Steve about five feet of space, leaving an awkwardly wide berth between them the way people do when they’re nervous about accidentally staying too close. 

Steve punches a few buttons on the contraption, then pats the lid firmly. “That should do it, I’d think,” he muses. Then he presses ‘Start Brew’ and miraculously, the light comes on and it beeps signs of life.

“Wow,” Sid marvels, a little breathless.

Steve gives him a quick two-fingered mock salute and then stuffs his hands into the pockets of his suit pants while they wait for the coffee to brew. He pulls the pot out and pours himself some when it’s only about a third of the way done. He’s a busy man.

“Okay, back to business,” he says then. Sid can’t tell if Steve is talking to Sid or himself, but he straightens up a bit regardless. Steve moves past him and away down the hall without further comment.

Sid turns to watch him go. Some things just aren’t fair.

\---

Sid shows up at his internship a few days after that to find another gift on his desk: a box of chocolates, this time. Like the CD, it’s not wrapped, but it does have a big stick-on bow slapped across the front. _ For: SIDNEY_, is again scrawled on the plastic of the box in the same handwriting that was on the jewel case. _ (ONLY) _ is tacked on below that, which is fair because everyone in the office is a vulture when it comes to sweets. Claude would definitely steal one if he had the chance.

On that note, why hasn’t he? A mental roll call confirms that Sid’s the last intern to arrive to their little bullpen. If someone left the box on Sid’s desk recently enough that no one’s lifted one, someone had to have seen it get put there. “Hey, Hilary, did you see who put this here?”

She hardly looks up. “No,” she says convincingly.

Claude’s next to her, yellow headphones resting around his neck. “Claude, did you see who put this here?”

“No,” he says convincingly.

Sid frowns. He turns to Shea, who’s most often the first intern to the office. “Shea, did you see who put this here?”

Shea shifts around in his seat. “Uh, no,” he says unconvincingly. Hmm. 

Sid files that away for further examination at a later date. He sits down and pulls the box closer, lifts the cover and then has to refrain from moaning aloud. Whoever his gifter is, they know their way around chocolate, because they got him the best kind.

He unwraps one and bites into it. It’s filled with caramel and garnished with nut shavings. Sid sighs contentedly. 

“Do you actually _ bite _ those things, weirdo?” Claude asks, disbelief obvious in his tone. 

Sid feels his eyes narrow reflexively. “That’s how you eat food.”

“No, I mean, they’re _ bite size_. It should only take one bite.”

“What, so you’d just shove the whole thing in your mouth?”

“Uh, yeah. Like you’re supposed to.”

“Guys,” Hilary interrupts. “How are you actually about to fight over candy? It’s just candy.”

“_Just _ candy?” Sid balks. “That’s disrespectful.”

Hilary’s left eyebrow arches. “To the candy?”

“To me!” Sid answers back just as Claude joins in, “Yes, to the candy! That’s world-class chocolate right there, probably. I don’t know for sure until Sid lets me try one.”

_ Of course _ he’d try to play it like that. “Oh no, uh-uh. No way.”

Claude stands up from his desk and comes over to haunt Sid’s again. “C’mon, one?” he asks. Meghan, who has the desk nearest to Sid’s, is out of town for the rest of the week, so Claude grabs her empty chair and scoots it way too close to Sid, within grabbing distance of the chocolate. 

Sid pulls the box in toward his chest. “Keep dreaming. Why would I give you one?”

“Well, I wanna know if they’re good!” Claude plunks an elbow on Sid’s desk and puts his chin in his hand. “Hard to tell from just the package,” he mumbles.

“They’re my favorite,” Sid grumpily informs him. “So don’t count on gettin’ any.”

Claude perks up at that, and Sid recognizes his misstep. Knowing that Sid enjoys something will only strengthen Claude’s resolve to take it away from him. “Really? Your favorite?”

Sid doesn’t answer. Sometimes he wonders what it is he did that caused Claude to take such an interest in him, in stepping on Sid’s toes until he gets a reaction. He won’t get one here. “I think all of your unfinished tasks are looking for you,” Sid says. There’s nothing he turns up his nose at more than people who don’t know how to apply themselves.

Claude performs his trademark eyeroll and slinks back to where he’s supposed to be. That’s victory enough for Sid, who grabs for another chocolate absentmindedly. He doesn’t even realize until he hears Claude’s laughter that he’s popped the whole thing in his mouth, one go.

\---

_ December 2007 - Detroit, Michigan _

“Sidney,” their supervisor Michelle starts on one particularly frigid day, “Hašek’s car needs a gas run.” She waggles a set of car keys in the air at him, and Sid comes to collect them from her. Stuff like this seems like grunt work, but it’s an important part of his job. The players make millions, sure, but what they make in money, they sacrifice in time. The office tries to make their lives easier in whatever way they can. 

“Got it,” Sid says, spinning the key ring around his finger a couple of times like cool people do. His supervisor glares, and Sid stops. 

“Oh, and take Claude with you. He’s got nothing to do right now and it’s driving me crazy.”

Claude’s head snaps up and he gestures at his computer, baffled. It actually does look like he’s working for once, clicking away at that new editing software that no one knows how to operate but him. 

She gives him a stern look. “You’ve been rewinding and pressing play on the same shot of Zetterberg cellying for the past fifteen minutes. Go with Sid to the gas station.”

So that’s how they end up puttering along Fort Street to the Sunoco in awkward silence, Claude muttering under his breath incomprehensibly at his phone. He does it for so long that Sid is certain he’s just pretending to read new messages so he doesn’t have to make conversation with Sid; there’s no way he’s that popular.

“Who are you even talking to?” Sid snaps as they’re pulling up to a pump.

Claude gives him a thin, unenthused look. “All my friends,” he says like Sid is dumb. 

“Oh yeah?” Sid throws the car into park, and then he can effectively broadcast his doubt straight to Claude’s face without worrying about crashing into something. “What are their names?”

Claude clearly finds it hilarious that Sid is trying to question him about his obviously fake texting. A short laugh rattles in his throat, and his lips part over a baffled grin. “They’re from home. You don’t know them, psycho.”

Sid hmphs, and Claude settles back into gazing at his phone screen, slumping down in the passenger seat once more now that Sid is no longer entertaining to him. “I have lots of friends here too, of course,” Claude insists absently, tapping at the keys of his phone. He has one of those new slide-y ones with a full keyboard.

_ Oh_, yeah, _ lots _ of friends, _ of course_. Sid snorts, looking around for the button to open the fuel door. “Sure. Relatable.”

Claude straightens up, watching him again. “What, you don’t think it’s the same for you?” Sid says nothing, and Claude’s eyebrows arch. “From where I’m sitting, you look like Mr. Popular. All the other interns kiss up to you, gifts on your desk, our boss trusts you with the office credit card, Yzerman loves you.”

Finally, there’s the button to open the hatch. Sid ignores Claude in favor of pressing it, hopping out of the car and starting to fill it up. It’s fucking freezing outside, and Sid had forgotten to put his gloves back on before he got out of the car. He shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket and waits. 

When the gas tank is full, Sid gets back in the car. “None of that counts as having friends, though.”

Claude raises his eyebrows again. “Are you still on this? Okay, fine. I’m sure you have plenty of friends at home in Canada, right?”

Sid hesitates, shifts in his seat. He should just say he does. He doesn’t have to talk to Claude about anything.

“Not all of them, uh. Not all of them stayed my friend, after I came out.”

Claude looks at him then, and Sid doesn’t look back. He starts the car up again and puts it in gear. “I paid to take it through the wash, too,” he says lightly, steering them toward the automatic car wash entrance. 

“That’s really hard,” Claude says, ignoring the car wash comment. Sid searches for some sort of mocking edge to his tone, but comes up empty. Claude sounds strangely genuine. “I get it.”

Sid bristles at the suggestion that Claude could possibly _ get it_, no one straight could really get it. He opens his mouth to say so, but at the last moment decides to hold his tongue. In a second, he’ll be profusely glad that he did, after Claude says, “I haven’t come out to anyone back home except my parents. But I know I’d be really scared to, so I think it’s brave you did, even if your friends turned out to suck.”

Oh? Oh. _ Oh_. Claude is saying—okay. Okay, so Claude likes guys, maybe. Sid feels kind of silly for assuming the very thing he wishes people wouldn’t assume about him. Should he acknowledge it? Or should he just pretend he knew the whole time? In a panic, Sid chooses the second one. “Uh, thanks,” he mumbles, letting up on the brake when the light turns green to signal them into the car wash tunnel. Scooting the car to the right point gives him something to focus on other than the bombshell Claude just dropped as casually as he shoots trash into Sid’s wastebasket like he’s hitting three-pointers.

Even though Sid is completely unwilling to admit to his surprise, he still needs to say _ something_. He can’t leave it silent after that, especially seeing as Claude had tried to be…_nice _ to him. That’s not something Sid can remember ever happening before. “It’s cool to take your time with it too,” he starts, prepared to ramble just for the sake of saying something. “For the most part I don’t regret leaving the closet behind, but sometimes I do wish I could just…crawl back in for a little bit, have no one look at me any differently. I’m not sure what the rush was. I’m from a kind of small town, so I never had a boyfriend to come out for or anything.”

The car wash beeps to signal that it’s starting, and then the water spray drums on the windshield. “Yeah,” Claude says over the noise, nodding. “I mean, I’ve never had a boyfriend either, because no one knew about me, so. Yeah. But here is different. Feels a lot safer to let people know. I don’t think it’d be _ bad _ at home or anything like that, but…”

Sid nods. “There’s something easier about telling new people than people you’ve known your whole life.”

Claude’s shoulders drop, relieved. Like he’d been trying to say exactly that but didn’t know how to express it. “Yeah.”

“I remember mentioning it to my roommate Flower for the first time, offhand, like—_and if I bring guys home_, you know, that sort of thing. I was so nervous, but he didn’t even blink. Just like, accepted it without comment.”

“Because when you tell people right after you just met them, it’s like it’s always been their picture of you, not something that changes their picture of you.” There’s silence for a beat. Then Claude’s chest puffs up like he’s belatedly got his feathers ruffled over something. “So do you bring a lot of guys home and stuff?”

Pretty much none. It still stings a little bit that Sid’d had this vision of how much easier it would be to date in college with a larger pool to choose from, but it turns out that it’s hard to find people you like who like you back in any situation. “Not unless you count group project partners,” Sid grumbles. “It’s fine. I keep busy, you know. School, the internship.”

Outside, the rotating brushes beat bluntly on the car window. Claude’s whole body is facing him now. He’s brought his knees to his chest in something like a fetal position, his temple laid up on the headrest as if it were a pillow. “Are you lonely?” he asks, just quietly above the din of the car wash, a loose cannon of a question fired with only a whisper.

Sid swallows. There’s no way Claude actually cares. He’s just trying to goad Sid into saying something embarrassing that he can make fun of later in front of everyone. Still, it’s just the two of them in this dark tunnel, closed off and far away from the rest of the world, wherever it is. Sid has the bizarre urge to tell the truth. 

The car wash horn goes off, harsh and ear-numbing. _ WASH COMPLETE, EXIT SLOWLY _the little screen in the tunnel tells them.

Saved by the bell, Sid hits the gas and doesn’t answer, assuming that that’s enough of an interruption to bring their talk to a clear conclusion. Claude lets him get away with dodging the question, for the most part. He does say, “Alright, I see how it is,” sly and teasing as he settles his limbs back into a passenger-safe position.

Sid huffs a laugh, putting the car in reverse and pulling the wheel all the way to one side so he can maneuver to the exit on the other side of the station. “You don’t know when to quit,” he shoots back.

“Maybe not,” Claude says. Sid’s not looking at Claude, but he can feel Claude looking at him. 

And then when he glances over, Claude’s index finger is hovering in the air next to Sid’s cheek, inching closer like he’s going to poke it. Sid takes a hand off the wheel to swat it away. There’s a pole he needs to squeeze by, and he needs to focus so he can navigate the tight space. “Do you _ have _ to put your hand in my face while I’m driving—”

“You have a _ dimple_,” Claude’s teasing, trying to poke it again. 

Sid wraps a fist around Claude’s outstretched finger and squeezes hard enough to hurt a little, going kind of cross-eyed when he looks at the blurry shape of their hands. “No I _ don’t_, you’re so annoying,” he whines, and then he hits the gas again.

A sickening scratching noise rips through the fuzz of his distraction, and Sid and Claude’s mouths drop open in unison. Sid can basically feel his life as he knows it ending with as much force as he can feel the impact of _ Dominik Fucking Hašek’s _ car scraping against a concrete pole. He slams the brake.

For a moment, everything is frozen.

“You are so fired,” Claude whispers, his finger still caught in Sid’s hand.

“_Me?_” Sid releases Claude’s finger like it’s caught on fire. Now it feels like he’s pointing in accusation. “You!”

“Uh, excuse me, which one of us is in the driver’s seat?”

“And which one of us was fucking with the driver’s personal space? If you blame this all on me, I _ swear_, I’ll—”

“What, fight me?”

“Yeah, go ahead and try me!” Sid snaps, and then they’re interrupted by the shrill ringing of Sid’s stupid phone. He wishes he didn’t fucking own one. 

He flips it open only to see that it’s their fucking supervisor calling. This couldn’t get more awful. “Get out and check the damage,” he hisses at Claude, who raises his hands in a gesture of innocence and does as he’s told, for once. 

Sid jams the green button to accept the call. “Hi?” he answers warily.

“Hi Sidney,” Michelle’s voice comes from the other end.

Claude, who has come around to Sid’s side of the car to take a look at the scratch, raps on the window and motions for Sid to roll it down. “Uh, yeah. Hi,” Sid says into the phone, fumbling around for the window button. Finally he hits on it, and the frosty air outside creeps into the car as the glass lowers. 

“It’s coming off,” Claude whisper-shouts, and Sid almost has a heart attack. If parts of the car are _ coming off_, this is worse than Sid could’ve imagined. He’d probably rather hear that parts of his own body are coming off.

“Are you two almost back?” Michelle wonders. “You’ve been gone for awhile, wanted to check to make sure everything was alright.”

“_What’s _ coming off?” Sid mouths. Then, to Michelle, “Hold on, just a moment.” He covers the speaker with his hand.

Claude says, “The pole left a huge paint streak on the side of the car, but when I pick at it, the paint flakes off. Man, we’re fine. It’s so fine.” 

_ God, _ Jesus. _ It’s coming off. _ What the fuck kind of phrasing is that? Sid contemplates smacking Claude, even though he’s just delivered some pretty good news.

Michelle’s voice chirps through the speaker under Sid’s hand. “Sidney? Is there some sort of hold up?”

Claude shakes his head, quick and firm. Clearly, he doesn’t think Sid should say anything about how they damaged the star goalie of the Detroit Red Wings’ car. Six-time Vezina-winning, two-time Hart-winning, Olympic gold medal-winning, Stanley Cup-winning star goalie Dominik Hašek. 

Sid raises the phone to his cheek. “Yeah, um, we’re running a little late,” he tells their supervisor.

“Dude,” Claude whispers harshly. “_LIE_,” he mouths. “_LIE_.”

Sid takes a breath. “We’re running late because we took it through the car wash.”

\---

They come out of the Joe at the end of the work day laughing their asses off. It’d been a struggle to keep it together just for the last hour they had to be there; Claude would be clicking away at his computer with a blank, faraway expression on his face, then suddenly he’d have his face in his keyboard, muffling quiet unprompted snickers. 

As they step into the parking lot abreast of each other, Sid digs an elbow into Claude’s side. “Can’t believe you almost cost me my job.”

Claude gives him an elbow back. “I _ saved _ you your job. You never would’ve lied to Michelle if I hadn’t been there.”

“I never would have crashed if you hadn’t been there,” Sid insists. 

Claude tilts his head side-to-side begrudgingly. “_Maybe _ not, alright, maybe.” He stops walking where they should peel off in separate directions to their cars. “Okay, well, um. I’ll see you Friday, then?”

Sid is going to say, “Yeah,” but then his eye catches on a figure in the distance over Claude’s shoulder. Hašek is standing right there in the parking lot, examining the side of his car.

Sid’s stomach drops. They’d so meticulously scrubbed all of the paint marks off the side of the car, it’d hardly looked like anything happened. It’s the kind of scratch you don’t notice till down the line, and when you do you have no idea how long it’s been there, or whether it always was.

But Sid and Claude had been thinking with the mindset of broke kids who owned used cars from the 90’s with any number of mystery dents and scratches, who would never think to watch out for a new one. Hašek is noticing the lone blight on his shiny, well-kept SUV, and Sid and Claude are totally cooked.

And then Hašek’s looking up, and. Is he making eye contact with Sid? No. Sid averts his eyes. If Sid doesn’t look back then it’s not eye contact. But he can’t do that, it’s Dominik Hašek. He shamefully looks back up again. Dominik Hašek is indisputably making eye contact with him.

“What?” Claude frowns. He hasn’t looked behind himself yet, but he does now. Hašek raises a hand and seems to beckon them over. Claude’s shoulders drop. “Fuck.”

They approach Hašek with all the enthusiasm of middle-schoolers walking into their first ever detention. “You,” he says when they get close. “You are interns, yes? You know who puts this scratch?” he asks in his thick Czech accent, his rolling r’s and long vowel sounds. 

It doesn’t even sound that accusatory, but Claude breaks instantaneously under the feather-light pressure. “It was us, when we took it for gas!” he confesses in a rush. “We’re so sorry, Mr. The Dominator!”

Well, nothing for it now. Cursing Claude’s name, Sid lets his face fall into his own hands and awaits their sentencing. 

Hašek sighs heavily. “It’s okay, I’ll fix. Little boys, try not get in trouble more, ah? If I need again, next time someone else drives my car.” With that, he shakes his head one more time at the scratch, hops into the driver’s seat, and pulls away.

They watch Hašek’s car until it’s disappeared into the distance. “Goalies,” Claude marvels.

\---

A few days later, Sid discovers another mixtape on his desk. Not too long after that, it’s chocolate again. Soon enough, he accepts the fact that this is going to be a recurring thing: every couple of days, there’s a little gift on his desk, no note, no explanation.

Sid’s seen movies. He knows what this looks like. He’d be inclined to think it was all an elaborate prank of some sort, but he’s not sure even Claude would be dedicated enough to spend _ weeks _ leaving gifts on Sid’s desk all for a joke that Sid has yet to even acknowledge or play into.

So, he has a secret admirer. Fine. He suspects it’s Shea, who never really says much to Sid in the first place, but is the only person who’s been acting noticeably shifty since the presents started cropping up. Shea’s cool, but Sid isn’t really interested in him, so he’s not sure how to address the situation. Plus, it’s still…really, really nice of him.

And what if Sid is wrong? His secret admirer could be…someone else. You never know.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahaha I'm BACK!!! After an extended bout of promising to post this second half like, two weeks ago, and then a week ago, and then four days ago, and then yesterday, and then today...we're finally a go.
> 
> I don't think there's much to warn for in this, but I will say that there is the brief inclusion/mention of the real-life partner and children of Steve Yzerman. Now would be a good time to restate that this is a work of complete fiction and only borrows from the names and faces of every single character included, and therefore is not meant to be an accurate or factual representation of them. 
> 
> (Edit: oh, there is also a fair amount of underage alcohol consumption in this chapter. You're warned!)

_ Still December 2007 - Still Detroit, Michigan _

“I don’t know how to work this,” Sid complains aloud, fussing with the USB cord he’s plugged into his laptop. “How do I get my songs from in the computer to on the thing?” Taylor had shown him how originally, when she moved his whole music library on the first day he got it, but he has 3 CD’s worth of new songs now and they should probably go on his iPod. 

“Here,” Claude says, plopping into the seat beside him at the break table. He turns Sid’s laptop toward him. “Stop touching it, I can do it. You want all of them?”

“Just these ones,” Sid indicates, and that’s when Claude realizes that he’s looking at an ‘Untitled Album’ by ‘Unknown Artist.’ He clicks through to the next one. And the next one.

“Wow. Someone’s making you a lot of mixtapes,” he comments, nonchalant. 

Sid squirms. If Claude’s about to say something derisive, Sid feels the urge to protect whoever’s giving him things, even though he isn’t totally sure who they are. “I think they’re cool.”

Claude’s eyes dart to Sid’s and his brows rise a bit. “You like them?” he asks.

“Yeah, it’s thoughtful,” Sid shrugs. “They’re kinda random sometimes, but…”

Claude frowns, eyebrows coming down again. “How so?” he asks flatly.

Sid shakes his head. “It’s hard to explain unless you’ve heard the songs,” he says. He could probably figure out exactly who’s giving him things if he could only figure out who in the office listens to so much John Denver. “Can you just put them on my iPod?”

Claude returns his attention to the task at hand, but he doesn’t give the topic a rest while he finishes up. “So, is the person who made you these the same person leaving chocolates on your desk?”

Ugh, Sid keeps eating way too many of those, but they’re _ the best kind_. “I think so. I don’t…I don’t know who they are, though,” he admits. He hasn’t expressly told anyone in the office that he has a secret admirer. They get it, probably, because it’s not like Sid has a boyfriend hanging around who would be leaving him gifts. Still, he hasn’t used the term ‘secret admirer’ out loud.

Claude hums. “Maybe it’s the same person who keeps clearing the snow and frost off all your car windows.”

Sid hadn’t even noticed someone was doing that. He realizes it now—every time he leaves work on a bad weather day, all the cars in the lot have snow piled up on their windshields, but his doesn’t. In retrospect, he doesn’t know how he _ thought _ that was happening, but.

“Yeah,” Sid says. “Maybe so.”

Claude’s eyes are locked onto the screen. Sid has a wild thought, assures himself that it’s crazy, and then lets it evaporate from his brain. 

\---

Sid knows it’s not Steve Yzerman giving him chocolates and making him mixtapes with little hearts by his name and ridding his car of potential obstructions to his vision, apparently. He’s not stupid. He knows that Steve is married to some nameless wife Sid never sees around, that he’d never look twice at a twenty-year-old kid working for the team, two decades his junior.

But every time Michelle sends Sid to Steve’s desk to hand in cost summaries for the week, and Steve nods firmly and says, “Great work, Sidney,” well. Sid can pretend.

He’s allowed to pretend.

\---

The morning of a big matinee game against the Blackhawks, Claude comes into work looking absolutely dead on his feet. He stumbles over the hind legs of Sid’s chair, and it actually looks like an accident rather than another thing designed to piss Sid off. When Claude finally thunks down in his own seat, Sid can see that the bags under his eyes are prominent, underlined by dark bruising that tells the tale of a night with no sleep.

“God, what happened to you?” Hilary asks disinterestedly while she’s messing with some chart on Excel. “You look like you’ve been poisoned and resurrected.”

Claude gives her a narrow look, but doesn’t argue back. “I was up all night finishing the montage for the game today.” 

“Why didn’t you do it at work before? Where you’re supposed to do your job?” Sid asks, largely out of habit rather than any real desire to kick Claude when he’s down.

Claude looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “I get distracted at work.”

Well, Sid can relate to that. He’s feeling maudlin about his admittedly weird crush on Steve, how stupid and hopeless it is. It would be nice if he could just make himself like someone real. He glances over at Shea, still the likeliest candidate to be Sid’s secret admirer considering his general twitchiness. Disappointingly, it still doesn’t make Sid feel any particular kind of way.

“I think you guys both need to get lives,” Hilary announces. “Take up a new hobby. Find a date for the Wings holiday party! That’s coming up. Or just go on a regular date.” 

“Who am I supposed to go on a date with?” Sid asks miserably, chin in his hand. He tries not to summon any sort of silly daydream in which he attends the Wings staff holiday party on Steve’s arm, looking sharp in not-matching-but-tastefully-complementary suits. Maybe he gets to sighing too wistfully about it, because Hilary notices.

“_Sid_,” she teases, dragging his name out. “Do you have a crush on somebody?”

“What? No,” Sid answers too fast. He glances around the room, terrified. Meghan is peering over at him bemusedly from the next seat over. Oh god, he really can’t afford for people at his internship to find out he has a schoolgirl crush on Steve Yzerman. 

“Oh my god,” Hilary laughs. “Is it someone who works here?”

Claude has been clicking away at his computer for the last few minutes. He has his headphones on, presumably to tune Hilary out. But there must be nothing playing through them, because his eyes skip over to Sid’s then, wide and curious. Sid wants to perish, just spontaneously combust. Claude would never let him live it down if he knew the truth.

“No,” Sid answers too slow.

Claude smiles at him then, and Sid’s heart thuds curiously in his chest. It’s not mocking, just little and _ shy_. Huh. Maybe he’s decided to try having some compassion, or something. Feel some emotion toward Sid other than scorn.

“_Oooooh_, it is,” Hilary teases. Sid flushes bright pink, and Claude keeps grinning like he can’t help it.

\---

Steve hardly notices the next time Sid steps through his open office door to deliver weekly cost reports. He’s there with his focus on some thick stack of papers, hand rubbing at his chin absently. He glances up when Sid clears his throat and cautiously treads further into the room. 

“Sidney,” he says, lifting a hand to take Sid’s packet, neatly organized and stapled. “Thanks. Tell Michelle it’s appreciated too. I’ll see you at the holiday party on Saturday, I’m assuming?”

Right, that. Sid winces. “Oh, um…”

“I know a Saturday night schmoozing old front office execs is probably not how you envision spending your weekend, but it’s always really fun. Can’t miss it.” The corner of Steve’s mouth quirks up. “You know how Mark from the scouting department is missing a tooth?”

Sid blinks, gives an unsure nod. “It’s from his playing days, right?”

Steve shakes his head smugly, actually dropping his pen and for the first time looking at Sid with full attention. “It’s from last year’s holiday party, when Ken got so fucking tanked he accidentally knocked a beer bottle straight into Mark’s face. Funniest thing I’ve ever seen.” Sid’s jaw pops open a bit. Ken Holland, General Manager. Steve points a finger at Sid. “Can’t miss it.”

“It’s not that I don’t want to go,” Sid hurries to say. “It’s just, my car’s in the shop.” When it’d stalled out the day before, Sid had thought that it was only his rightful comeuppance for the stunt with Hašek’s car. He deserved it, an even cosmic punishment. “Got no way to get there.”

A vaguely stumped frown comes upon Steve’s face. “Hm,” he replies, pausing. 

\---

Sid returns to the interns’ bullpen with giddy, shaky hands. He checks his watch and finds that it’s already past the time he normally leaves for his evening block class—he’d spent too long in Steve’s office nailing down details. _ Saturday_, fuck. He’d gone from having a lonely, bored Saturday night ahead of him to having a date with Steve Yzerman—date used figuratively, of course. Not a real date. Just a ride. Still, he’s in light shock that Steve offered to pick him up and drive him to the staff holiday party at all. He gathers his things up hastily, too distracted to even feel thankful that everyone’s already left so there’s no one to witness him acting weird. He’ll need a nice suit jacket, fuck.

The door Sid shut behind himself opens once more. “Hey, there you are,” Claude’s voice comes from the doorway. “You weren’t here a second ago.”

Sid smiles a little, doing up the buckle on his satchel. Leave it to Claude to state the obvious. It’s actually kind of cute once you get used to it. “Yeah, I was talking to someone. Gotta go now, though. I’ll see you at the holiday party?” Which Sid is now going to. In Steve Yzerman’s car, with Steve Yzerman.

Claude edges further into the room, coming to rest by Sid’s desk. Too close, as usual, but it bothers Sid less these days, maybe. “About that, actually…” Claude trails off, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Sid’s desire to be snippy with Claude has only ebbed as the semester’s gone on, but he has a class to get to, and old habits die hard. “What about it?” he asks distractedly, giving his desk a 'last' onceover for the third time. He always worries he’s going to forget his keys even though he knows he’s already put them in his bag. But on the off chance he forgets to put them in his bag, he’ll be fucked when he gets home late and Flower’s already sleeping.

“I was thinking maybe we could go to the holiday party together,” Claude blurts. “That was what I was thinking. I don’t know if you were, um, thinking it, but—”

“What, like carpool?” Sid throws on his coat, grabs his umbrella. He’s really late. “Sorry, Steve said he would give me a ride.” And Claude is _ not _ invited. He’d probably be doing his damnedest to make Sid blush and squirm and…do all sorts of things that can’t happen in front of Steve. “So I won’t be able to be your designated driver or anything.”

“Oh, right,” Claude says. Sid must be imagining the way his shoulders have dropped, because it’s not as if Claude likes spending time with him. The two of them aren’t exactly a recipe for success. The last time they were in a car together, they’d crashed it. Still, there’s something…_embarrassed _ about Claude’s posture, the way he shrugs. “I’ll just—carpool with someone else, then,” he grumbles. “Not a big deal.” 

Sid throws him a skeptical glance, but he really doesn’t have time to decode Claude’s behavior, which is hard enough when Sid isn’t in a rush. If there’s anything off about his blank expression, Sid’s likely imagining it. “Alright. Bye,” Sid says, feeling bemused and vaguely guilty. He heads toward the door, and Claude stays put while Sid makes his way out. 

“_Carpool_,” he thinks he hears said miserably from behind the door that’s already swung shut behind him. Claude must really need a ride.

\---

_ Straightening your lapel for the hundredth time isn’t gonna make any actual difference in how you look, _Sid scolds his own reflection. There’s no need to be examining it in the mirror. He’s gone for the same look he always does when he attends anything remotely formal: dark blue suit. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

He goes downstairs to wait out front at 5:58 p.m. because Steve said he’d be by at 6. He doesn’t want Steve thinking he’s not prompt.

At 6:03, a silver car rolls up to his building. Sid knows before it’s close enough to see inside of that Steve’s driving it. And when it’s close enough to see inside of, Sid realizes that Steve is indeed driving the car, but he’s not alone.

Sid’s stomach hurtles southward. He reaches for the handle to the backseat instead of the front.

His entire mood has soured in an instant, but there’s absolutely nothing he can do but grip the handle to the door and pull it open. There’s no way out of this now. _ Of course_, he thinks dimly, sliding into the backseat, not sure who to look at first. Steve’s wife—she must be Steve’s wife—turns her body to make eye contact with Sid from the passenger’s seat, clutching the seat back lightly and smiling at him, but Sid is distracted by who he’s joined in the back of the car; two girls with chestnut hair and button noses blink owlishly at him. Sid’s basically brushing shoulders with the one in the middle seat.

“Hi! I’m Lisa,” Steve’s wife says from the seat in front of Sid, reaching an arm out to shake his hand despite the awkward twisting she has to do to make it possible. “And these are the girls. Girls, can you say hi?”

Steve’s daughters fleetingly introduce themselves as Maria and Sophia, but immediately thereafter become sidetracked by punching the ceiling of the car and reaching to yank at the pin on the lapel of Sid’s jacket, respectively. 

“They’re eight and seven,” Lisa explains kind of like an apology.

“Bella’s thirteen,” Steve tacks on. “She had a sleepover to get to tonight. Anyway, I hope it’s okay if we drop them at my brother’s on the way downtown?” he asks, as if Sid actually has a say in the matter.

“Sure. It’s, um, nice to meet you all,” Sid says, praying that his voice doesn’t crack or do anything irregular at all. He smooths his palm over the leather of the seat nervously. “Thanks so much for picking me up,” he manages, barely. 

“Of course, kid,” Steve says. “Couldn’t let you miss it after I ran my mouth about it, eh?”

So that’s that. As he drives, Steve talks more about the party, the kids. Sid knew Steve had children, distantly. But now evidence of the fact is right there in his face, bouncing up and down rambunctiously in the seats next to him. Lisa keeps turning to involve them in conversations, lightly offering distractions in hopes of settling them down. She’s not Steve’s nameless phantom of a wife, now. She’s dark-haired, oval-faced, smiles easy. She looks like a good woman and she talks like a good parent. She was always around, looking and talking like that, in all the spaces of Steve’s life that Sid just didn’t previously have access to. Steve touches her arm from across the center console with such obvious care, and Sid shifts miserably in the backseat, feeling incredibly young and raw.

He’d never felt like he wasn’t young, per se. But now he knows that he’s a child. Steve’s toting a backseat full of them.

\---

The party is…just fine. Merciful, maybe, due to the simple fact that there’s an open bar and they aren’t carding. No one seems to blink at the sight of Hilary double-fisting a beer and champagne despite being underage, so Sid gets a cocktail for himself, tells them to make it extra strong. If he has to stomach the sight of Steve laughing and smiling with his wife all night, then he hopes to drink until his vision goes blurry. Maybe he’ll be the one to knock someone’s tooth out this year.

He’s not at that point yet, though. By the time he’s mingled with everyone he’s not too unimportant to talk to, it’s probably only been a little over an hour. On his way back to the bar for a second drink, he passes by Steve and Lisa, who are involved in a discussion with a few people Sid doesn’t recognize, and Lisa shoots him a grin as he goes. 

Sid looks behind himself at them while he waits for the bartender to get done with someone else’s order. They’re not overly demonstrative as a couple, but they have visible habits, the kind Sid guesses you can only develop throughout time together: the place he touches on the small of her back, the way he takes her drink absentmindedly while she needs both hands to dig something out of her purse. They seem good together, both functional and affectionate—realistic and romantic.

Sid can put his finger on it in his head, finally. It’s not jealousy he feels. It’s loneliness. It’s not Steve specifically he’s wrecked over not having. It’s that simple kind of love.

The gnawing, sinking feeling he has now is loneliness, that same beast that reared its head in front of Claude in Hašek’s car. He can deal with that. He’s dealt with that before.

The bartender fixes him a drink and Sid sips at it for a moment before he spots Claude himself alone at a table across the room. The table he’s sitting at is practically half-hidden behind the glare of the giant lit-up Christmas tree in the corner. Despite the light, Sid can see that Claude is dressed well, gray suit jacket with a nice blue shirt underneath. Now that Sid’s looking at him, he thinks Claude’s hair looks a little shorter, like maybe he’d gotten it trimmed recently. Sid wonders when he got that done, whether it was like that last time Sid saw him. He can’t remember. 

It’s the first time tonight Sid’s laid eyes on him, and the sight of him is strangely relieving. It’s the first time tonight Sid’s seen a table he wants to be sitting at, someone he can talk to without feeling either vaguely miserable or completely disconnected. He lets out a breath and crosses the room.

“Hey,” Sid starts, sliding into the open seat next to Claude. He tries to smile lightly. “I guess you found a ride, eh?” 

Claude nearly jumps at his arrival, but then his lips press together in a narrow shape that must be some approximation of a smile back. “Ha. Yeah,” he replies, stirring his drink with one of those tiny black straws. There’s silence for a moment, and then Claude shrugs, seemingly at nothing. “How’s your night been?” 

Sid shrugs too. “Okay,” he says at first, but it sounds so clearly like a lie that he’s forced to backtrack. “Pretty bad, actually. It’s been, uh. Not what I pictured.”

“Same,” Claude agrees, staring carefully into his glass. Then he shakes off whatever else he’s thinking about and glances up at Sid very briefly, his lips twisting up a bit. “I mean, yeah, you seem kinda down.”

Sid doesn’t know how he could tell when he won’t meet Sid’s eye for more than half a second at a time, but maybe Sid’s just that transparent. “Had a few daydreams squashed today,” he admits.

“Crush doesn’t like you back?” Claude guesses.

Sid feels his mouth flatten out. “They like someone else,” he decides to put it. He’ll never admit to another living soul that the ‘someone else’ Sid’s crush likes is _ his wife of eighteen years_. 

He thinks Claude will probably make fun of him anyway, even without that information. Instead, Claude sucks up what’s left of his cocktail until the straw is making an obnoxious noise over ice cubes and empty air. “Yeah,” he sighs when he’s done. “_Been _ there.”

Sid has never heard Claude sound that forlorn before, and it actually sort of does comfort Sid a little bit. Like it’s not stupid, what he feels, if even Claude can relate. If Claude would sooner commiserate than taunt him about it.

“Yo,” Hilary announces herself then, sitting down with them slowly and deliberately as she balances three shot glasses in her grip. She slides one in front of each of them. “Suck it down, losers.”

Might as well. Sid picks up the shot and throws it back, grimaces against how it burns on the way down. Maybe he should have more shame about trying to get lights-out drunk for free at a work event when he’s technically not even legal to drink in this country, but he can’t bring himself to care. Claude is on the same page, if the way he tosses his back is any indication. 

Hilary slams her empty shot glass on the table, but it only makes a dull, underwhelming thudding noise on the thick tablecloth. “So…this is lame, right?” she polls the group, looking between Sid and Claude for affirmation. “Should we go somewhere else?” 

“Yeah, but maybe it’s too early to ditch,” Sid hesitates. “It’ll look bad, won’t it?”

“Spiritually, I left the building half an hour ago,” Claude counters. He does look a little dead in the eye. “Might as well catch up physically.”

“Where would we even go?” Sid asks. “None of us are twenty-one.”

Hilary squints at him. “Do you really not have a fake by now?”

“Of course I don’t.”

Hilary wrinkles her nose, then raises her eyebrows inquisitively at Claude.

He scoffs. “Of course I do.”

Hilary rolls her eyes and shakes her head at the pair of them, but Sid thinks it’s safe to say she’s fond. “Come on. Let’s see what we can do.”

\---

The three of them end up at a sleazy karaoke club down the street that’s 18 and up. Sid and Hilary are halfway to absolutely trashed, and Claude is all the way there. He’s taking bullheaded sips of some whiskey drink that Sid can tell is disgusting just by the smell of it, and while Hilary’s found her way onstage with an entire bachelorette party shouting a rendition of the Spice Girls’ _Wannabe_, Claude is back to steadily avoiding eye contact with Sid. 

It’s not a good feeling. Sid’s not sure exactly what he did to deserve it. Earlier, back at the holiday party, he’d thought he was imagining it. But now, Sid’s pitched like three different topics of conversation and Claude has let each of them flop in turn with distant one-word responses.

“Are you mad at me or something?” Sid finally tries. It doesn’t add up, because he and Claude are annoyed with each other pretty much all the time, and that usually results in bickering and squabbling rather than labored silence.

Claude groans aloud and drops his elbow onto the table, nestles his chin into his hand. “I’m not _ mad _ at you. _ Tabarnak_, how embarrassing can this get?”

“I don’t like it when you curse in French,” Sid comments tipsily, swaying in his own seat a little. “You say French curses like nobody can understand you, but those are easy words. I know the French curses, you know.”

“Sure, buddy,” Claude says, already looking bored again, that intentional glaze coming over his eyes. Sid can’t stand that, what is that about? Why can’t Claude just—just talk to him like he normally does, just lean in and bust his chops over something irrelevant. Make him laugh and then poke the dimple he definitely doesn’t have. Say something obtuse that Sid can compile a list of counterpoints to. There’s a special kind of magic in that, the way Claude can say something offhand and thoughtless, and it’ll keep Sid up all night, growing more and more affronted by all the ways that it’s wrong as the hours pass.

“Why aren’t you hating me in all the ways you normally do?” Sid settles on asking. It’s the kind of question he would’ve kept trapped in his shut mouth if he were more sober.

Claude blinks at him once, blearily. Then his eyebrows pull together and he looks to the right and to the left, like he’s looking for someone to share his consternation and disbelief with, but nobody’s there. It’s so put on, such a performance, just like all of his regular shit talk, which puts a sick thrill in the pit of Sid’s stomach. Claude hiccups, then skeptically leans in closer to Sid. “Are you a moron, is that what this is?” he asks sharply. “Do you actually not get what’s going on here? I thought you were just faking like you don’t know ‘cause you could avoid it that way.” He shakes his head swiftly, leaning back against his seat. “_Hate _ you? Do you listen to any of what I say? How can you be listening to what I say and still be thinking the shit you’re thinking?”

Sid fish-mouths for a moment, lost for words mainly because he can’t figure out what Claude’s trying to say, despite the fact that Claude clearly thinks he’s communicating bluntly. It doesn’t matter; Claude doesn’t seem invested in getting a reaction from Sid despite all of his complaints, because he’s back to chugging the rest of his drink and staring into space. “I need to piss,” Sid decides. He needs some room to work through all the confusing words Claude just said, some time to reconstruct them in an order that has meaning. And he really, really does need to piss.

“Fine, go,” Claude snorts, so yeah, Sid does. Just like he said he was going to do, Jesus. In the mirror above the sink, Sid takes a good long look at his reflection, flushed and sweaty. He can’t remember anything Claude said, really, other than the phrase _ what’s going on here_. What’s going on here? Is there something going on, something he should be looking back at his interactions with Claude and reinterpreting, understanding anew? Is there something happening, something going on with them? Sid isn’t used to things happening _ to _ him, he’s used to trying to make things happen. He’s used to being in control. Claude wrecks that. Claude’s been taking a sledgehammer to that since the day he stepped into Sid’s life.

When Sid gets out of the bathroom, Claude is onstage wailing into the microphone to the raucous cheers of only Hilary and one other guy who’s dancing drunkenly and enthusiastically to the tinny sound of a recorded fiddle playing over the speakers. It’s a song Sid faintly recognizes even through his inebriation, and he takes a moment to try to place it.

Claude’s doing _ Thank God I’m A Country Boy_, Sid realizes. He’s up there doing a strangely tearful rendition of _ Thank God I’m A Country Boy_, and Sid is a total moron.

\---

Sid calls a cab back to his apartment without even announcing his departure to anyone. He sends a quick text from his Razr to Hilary to let her know that he _ got cab bye_. 

_ Get a BlackBerry you fool!!! _he gets back.

He lumbers upstairs to his apartment and spends about five minutes in front of the door checking his pockets for his keys. He fishes around in the right pocket and finds nothing, then the left. He checks his right pocket once more and still comes up empty, only finding his ID and a pack of gum. Flower’s probably asleep, so Sid has no way in. He shoots off a quick text to let him know where he is, but pressing buttons the correct amount of times for the letters he wants is difficult to finagle, so it comes out as _ Slpng nutside dr :( _

Whatever. Sid lowers his body to the ground and lays himself out. Maybe in a bit when he feels up to it, he can go to the desk downstairs and get a temp key.

But then, miraculously, the door opens. “Slipping nutside doctor, are we?” Flower greets him. Is it just Sid, or is that total gibberish?

“Oh, sorry,” Sid whispers loudly. “Did I wake you?”

“It’s 10:30 p.m. on a Saturday, Sid,” Flowers responds at full volume, holding a hand out for Sid to pull himself up with. “No.”

Once he’s upright, Sid follows Flower inside. Immediately, he spots the couch and remembers how comfy it is and how much he would like to sit on it right now, so he shuffles over to it and sits his butt in it. After that priority has been seen to, he yawns, “Flower, I got a problem.”

“Oh?” Flower says, flipping more of the living room lights on. “You tell me ‘bout it, and I’ll get you a water, drunky.”

“Ugh, I’m only a little bit drunky. I mean, drunk. Anyway.” Sid shakes his head, focuses in on the point, _ the point_. “It’s Claude.”

“What did he do now?” Flower says distractedly, digging ice cubes out of their ice cube tray to dump them in a glass. He’s well-acquainted with Sid’s constant whinging: _ Claude this_, _ Claude that_. It’s true, Sid knows he does it.

“No, I mean, my secret admirer is Claude,” Sid explains.

“Oh,” Flower stops short, actually looking up. He brings the glass of water over to the couch and sets it down on the coffee table in front of Sid, then takes a seat next to him. “You have a real secret admirer? Is that who’s giving you all the chocolates you’re bringing home? You didn’t tell me about that.”

Sid shrugs, pulling his feet up onto the couch, knees up to his chest. “I didn’t realize how important it was.”

“But it’s important now?” Flower prompts him.

“Now that it’s been Claude the whole time?” It’s been _ Claude _ leaving heartwarmingly weird, adorable gifts for him. Making sure his car is safe to drive in the winter. God, Claude had all but _ told _ him he was doing that.

It’s been Claude making him feel seen and appreciated. “Yeah, it’s important. And…confusing,” Sid says. “I just…all he ever does is like, mock and roast me. I didn’t think—I didn’t consider…” That that might be a shield for something. Or maybe even a vehicle for something.

“Why do you always assume he’s making fun of you?” Flower interjects, turning and leaning his back against the arm of the couch. 

“Because he is!” replies Sid, indignant. That much is undeniable. “One time he made a _ collage _ of photos Hilary took that I happen to be making stupid faces in.”

“Okay, yeah, that’s making fun of you,” Flower acknowledges. 

“And then a couple weeks ago he told me the sweater I was wearing ‘brought out my eyes’ or something.”

Flower blinks. “I think that’s just a compliment.”

“And sometimes I’m minding my own business and suddenly I can just feel someone’s eyes on me, right? So I look up and Claude is just _ looking _ at me. To psych me out, you know? To make me think there’s something on my face.”

“Why are you so sure someone’s trying to torture you when really it’s just that this boy thinks you’re cute?” Flower sighs, leaning forward so he can pat Sid’s knee. “If you don’t want his attention, that’s fine, bud. You don’t have to date anyone just ‘cause they’re interested in you. Just tell him to stop!”

“Stop?!” Sid tries to imagine it: coming into his internship in the morning with no greeting from Claude. Starting his day in peace. No one rearranging the stuff on his desk while he’s gone just to see if he’ll notice. No one playing trashsketball with his wastebasket.

Sounds like a poor excuse for an existence.

“I don’t want him to stop,” Sid realizes. He wants to continue to be special to Claude, because Claude is something irreplaceable for him, too.

“So there it is, I guess,” Flower says lightly, laughing. “If Claude likes you and you might like him, I don’t think you have a problem at all.”

Sid lets out a beleaguered groan, says thank you and goodnight to Flower, and retreats into his room for the night. It _ is _ a problem, because he has no idea how he feels or where to go from here. The only thing that’s clear is that the ball is in his court. Claude let it get increasingly obvious who was actually behind the gifts Sid was receiving, and Sid had let those hints drop on deaf ears. Claude told Sid to pull his head out of his ass in the karaoke bar. Claude…Claude invited him to the holiday party, _ fuck_. 

Is that even right? Is it possible that Claude was trying to ask him out, or is Sid altering the memory to suit a new hypothesis? Claude had said, “We should drive to the party together,” hadn’t he? Had he? Or had it been, “We should _ go _ to the party together,” which could be interpreted very differently? If you’d asked him a week ago, Sid would’ve said those two questions meant the exact same thing, especially coming out of Claude’s mouth. But it seems like he’s been wrong about, well, everything. So maybe Claude wanted to go to the party _ with _ Sid. They could’ve gone together, like—_together _ together. 

Sid attempts to picture what going as Claude’s date would have looked like, but he’s having difficulty. Claude has made such a point of outwardly demonstrating his contempt for Sid, it seems incongruous that he’s been…what, secretly harboring a crush on Sid the whole time? Surely not. 

Except, he’d been so downtrodden tonight, talking about crushes that wouldn’t give him the time of day. Except, he’d asked if Sid was lonely like he didn't want Sid to be. Except, he could be constantly poking fun at Sid just to have a reason to be around him. Except a lot of things, now that Sid’s looking at it all through a new lens. 

It’s a lens that’s helping him see not only Claude’s actions, but Claude himself very, very differently.

Sid opens the drawer of his nightstand, pulls out a familiar CD he’d tucked away, the first one he’d gotten. _ For: SIDNEY_. The scrawl on the case could definitely be Claude’s. Sid isn’t an expert in what his penmanship looks like, but it just seems right. Claude had sat down at his computer with his clunky headphones on and made this for him, handpicked the songs and doodled the little hearts around his name. The thought yanks at something nameless in Sid’s chest.

Sid puts the CD back in its place, gets up to grab his iPod from the shelf he’d last left it on. He has all the mixtapes on his iPod because Claude had helped him put them there—it’s all painfully fucking obvious now. There’s no convincing himself that he’s wrong, that Claude isn’t his secret admirer. That means that Sid has to acknowledge not only Claude’s feelings, but his own. They’ve been simmering under the surface for probably a lot longer than Sid’s realized; this is just the boiling point. And if they like each other and there’s a possibility for…_something _ between them, then that’s something Sid’s never had in any form before, and something Sid might’ve already fucked up because he refused to look it in the face. That’s…that’s scary.

He jams his headphones into his ears, presses play, and plunks facedown onto his bed. Besides, it’s only 11 p.m. on a Saturday night—a perfectly reasonable hour for a pity party. 

\---

It feels like the next week rolls around quicker than Sid wants it to. He spent the remaining part of the weekend thinking, contemplating, worrying—overthinking. He’d think about it and decide that he was just going to have a frank conversation with Claude, get everything out in the open. And then he’d think more about it and decide that, no, he should just feel it out and wait to see how Claude acts around him before he does anything. And then he’d waver back and forth between the two options in his head, and then he’d end up facedown on his mattress again. Rinse and repeat. 

So when he finally steps into the bullpen again, he’s really not sure what’s going to happen, but maybe that’s okay. Everything looks normal; Hilary’s there, sipping at her coffee and poring over some sort of paperwork. And—and Claude is there, on his computer at his regular desk. He’s just sitting there, sniffing periodically like he has a weird habit of doing, typing away at something. He’s not doing anything special, but—

God. Sid does like him.

Sid sits down, tries to establish some eye contact to get things rolling. “Hey,” he says hopefully, maybe tilting his head a bit to try to catch Claude’s eye despite the fact that Claude’s focus is on the screen of his computer.

Claude grabs his headphones from around his neck and snaps them over his ears.

Well, okay then. Not the best start. That’s alright, Sid can come back from this. He decides to go grab a coffee from the mini kitchen, regroup mentally and then return and settle in to take a second crack at, you know, getting the guy he likes to speak to him ever again. 

But when he steps out into the hallway, it turns out that he’s not the only one looking for a caffeine hit. Shea is standing by the coffee maker, carefully pouring himself a cup. Just seeing him briefly throws Sid for a loop; he’d all but forgotten that until a couple days ago, he’d been convinced that it was Shea leaving gifts on his desk.

Shea spots him, visibly startles, then shoves the coffee pot back into the machine and makes to pass Sid without a word on his way back to the bullpen. It’s that very behavior that Sid’s been noticing for weeks now. He wasn’t going to confront Shea about it because he’d thought it would lead to an uncomfortable conversation and subsequent rejection that Sid really didn’t want to have to deal with delivering, but now—now Sid suspects it’s something else entirely.

“Shea,” he calls, and Shea stops in his tracks, turns around. He looks comically guilty, and it’s an expression that just doesn’t fit on his face. They used to be perfectly friendly with each other until all this took over. “You know who my secret admirer is.” 

“No,” Shea tries to tell him, shaking his head far too resolutely to be genuine. “No, I—”

“I mean, you know it’s Claude,” Sid continues, bluffing like he’s completely certain when really, there’s still that infinitesimal shred of doubt hovering in the back of his mind. 

Shea’s posture releases tension. “Oh, he finally told you. Thank fuck, I can’t wait for my mornings to be free of death threats again.”

“Death threats?” Sid squeaks, choking around the confirmation that his secret admirer is definitely, 100% Claude. 

“It’s not my fault Giroux can’t get up early enough to put shit on your desk before anyone gets to work. That’s the way to do it if you want it to be an actual secret, I told him, but he took to strolling in ten minutes after I get here every single morning and then swearing me to secrecy on like, my grandpa’s grave or whatever. It’s just lazy work if you ask me, you can’t wake up ten minutes earlier so I don’t have to be involved? But he wasn’t—”

“Okay, thank you, Shea,” Sid manages. He crosses his arms, frowns to himself a little, puts his hands on his hips. “Could you, uh. On your way back in there, could you just tell him that, uh, Michelle wants to see him? In the hallway?”

Shea blinks. “That Michelle wants to see him?” he repeats.

“Yep.”

“In the hallway?”

“In the hallway, yep.”

Shea looks around himself at the hallway. Michelle isn’t out here, obviously. Sid’s out here. A look of dread floods over Shea’s features. “Claude didn’t actually tell you he was your secret admirer, did he,” he states more than asks. “You just totally played me.”

“More or less, yeah. Can you just tell him to come out here, please? But you can’t tell him I asked or he won’t—” 

“I can’t fucking believe my life,” Shea gripes, already turning around to head back into the bullpen. “You guys deserve each other.”

Sid certainly hopes so. Okay, fuck, he needs a plan, he needs something good to say to Claude. They need privacy, they need—

A moment later Claude emerges from the doorway to the bullpen warily, like he’s expecting to be jumped, which is perfect because Sid acts on instinct and kind of jumps him, just grabs him by the elbow and yanks him into the bathroom a few feet down the hall.

“_No_,” Claude howls all the while, “I _ knew _Michelle didn’t want to see me in the hallway, this is such bullshit, I don’t wanna talk to you.”

Sid ignores the noise, fiddles with the light switch on the wall until he can finally flick it on. Claude gives up and falls silent, blinking into the sudden harsh light, brushing off his elbow like Sid had gotten it dirty somehow.

“Fine,” Claude huffs quietly. “What did you want?” 

He is so impossible to deal with. Sid might never get tired of trying. _ Why are you so sure someone’s trying to torture you when really it’s just that this boy thinks you’re cute_, Flower had said, but it’s definitely both. Claude is trying to torture him and also thinks Sid’s cute, maybe. 

“Do you think I’m cute?” Sid demands, then curses himself mentally. What a fucking opener.

Claude practically recoils in surprise, and he stutters defensively over an answer for a moment, cornered. Finally, his shoulders drop. “Yes, okay?” he snaps, surprising Sid right back. “Do you want me to apologize, or something?”

“No!” Sid startles, fumbling for a response. “Just—good. Good, because I…I think so too.”

Claude stares blankly, unenthused. “You think you’re cute too?” 

“No! No, fuck.” He’s crashing and burning a little bit here. Of course Claude would make it as difficult as possible for Sid to string two fucking words together.

“Look,” Claude sighs, interrupting to take the reins of this terrible interaction out of Sid’s hands. “I don’t know who your crush really is, because clearly it wasn’t me. Maybe it’s one of the players, I guess. I don’t have quite as much money, or influence, or a crazy awesome hockey career—” 

Sid has no idea where Claude’s going with this, but he’s a stickler for accuracy. “You don’t have any influence,” he points out gently. 

Claude shrugs one shoulder. “Come on. I have a little bit.”

“You don’t.”

“Okay, well, _ one _ day I will,” Claude continues with an unconcerned wave of his hand, though Sid’s not sure how he intends to climb the ranks from the position of Video Production Intern, or what ranks there even are to climb. “Anyway, I know I couldn’t take you on fancy vacations, and I don’t have a sick car, and I—” 

“No, you’re the one who’s not getting this now,” Sid interjects over Claude’s babbling, on the brink of doing something stupid like stamping his foot. He steps in closer to make sure Claude hears him, sees how serious he is. “I never wanted any of that!”

Finally, _ finally_, Claude is meeting his gaze dead on. “Then I’ll ask again,” he says slowly. “What did you want?”

Sid shakes his head. “Just songs and chocolate, and. And to know that you’re looking out for me, thinking of me.” Sid pauses, swallows around these words in his throat. “I wanted what you gave me.”

Claude stares back at him, looking a lot more vulnerable than Sid’s ever seen him. Sid reaches a shaky hand up to touch him high on his arm near his shoulder. “_Crisse_,” Claude whispers.

“Stop,” Sid whines, backing Claude up against the wall. He’s doing this. “You know how I feel about that,” he murmurs, leaning in close enough to feel Claude’s breath fan over his cheek. 

“Are you gonna—” Claude breathes, but Sid’s already crossing the line, closing what little distance there is left. The kiss is pure relief after muscling so hard through the most awkward confession of all time, just so nonsensically easy and good. Claude opens his mouth and gives it back to Sid, slips his arms around Sid’s waist and melts. 

When Sid pulls back, Claude’s eyes open in slits like a drowsy cat. “Fuck, I really hate you,” he says contentedly, reeling Sid’s body in against him even more. “I had big plans for that Christmas party, you have no idea. I was gonna dress nice, pick you up. Wine and dine you. Maybe whisk you into the coat room to make out a little bit.”

Sid collapses into him, giggles into his neck. “Yeah, but there wasn’t a coat room there anyway, so.” Then he pulls his face away from Claude’s throat, pecks him on the lips again. The more times he does it, the more real it’ll become. “It’s better like this, isn’t it?” Here in an empty bathroom, Claude solid and absolute under his hands. Claude’s eyes are bleary like he’s still processing it. His hair is mussed up, he has a zit forming at the base of his chin. He doesn’t look perfect, but Sid’s breath sticks in his windpipe anyway. “In reality?”

“Yeah,” Claude agrees, kissing Sid once more for good measure. “It’s the best.”

  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  
  
  


_ June 2008 — Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania _

Interns technically don’t get to travel for any away game, not even the Stanley Cup Final. But it’s the _ Stanley Cup Final _ and the Wings are in a position to win it all. Sid buys his own fucking tickets, his own flight too. He and Claude get a hotel room together, and it feels…god, it feels adult. It’s not like they’ve never spent the night together—Flower’s met Claude, and _ shovel-talked _ Claude, and—and seen far too much of Claude’s naked ass for any of the three of them to be happy with, on one unfortunate occasion when he came back from class early—but this is another step forward. 

Sid and Claude are learning as they go, both never having been in a relationship before, certainly never anything as serious as this is turning out to be. Sid kind of can’t believe it. When he kissed Claude for the first time, he wasn’t beyond the doubt that maybe things would unravel as quickly as they came together. But despite their constant quarrelling and the countless other ways they push each other, they’ve been…solid. They’re developing _ visible habits_. 

(Claude still leaves chocolate on his desk occasionally. Sid reacts the same way every time. “Who could this have been?” he’ll ponder aloud in jest, loudly and pointedly. Usually this is the point when Hilary groans and covers her ears.

“I have _ no _ clue,” Claude will say back. “If I get to try one, maybe it’ll come to me.”)

Anyway, the Stanley Cup Final—Game 6 of the 2008 Stanley Cup Finals is fucking thrilling, certainly the most thrilling game Sid has ever had the privilege of witnessing with his own two eyes. The early lead, watching the Penguins cut it, being up by just one goal as the clock ticks down and Pittsburgh goes empty net, Hossa _ almost _ putting it in to tie in the very final second of the game—but no, it’s kept out, that’s it, the Wings take the Cup. Sid screams and jumps and celebrates with the rest of his contingent, but…the Pens were so close. The team looks heartbroken out there, Stanley Cup Losers on their very own ice. There’s a part of Sid’s heart that hurts with them inexplicably. 

Like the fanboys they are, Sid and Claude finesse their way into the tunnel outside of the locker rooms after the game by tagging along with one of the media guys they know vaguely. They shouldn’t be here, because they’re not working, but in the hullabaloo of _ winning a fucking Cup_, nobody notices or cares who the fuck is in the hallway. They’re down by the end, and none of the Wings will be out of the locker room for a significant while anyway, if the constant shouting and cheering that’s still echoing from within is any indication. Sid is buzzing. Claude takes his hand to squeeze it once before he lets go again.

Maybe if they weren’t so far down the tunnel, Sid wouldn’t have noticed it, but when people start to come out of a door a ways behind Sid, and it definitely isn’t the locker room where all the celebration is happening, Sid turns his head on instinct. He’s glad he did; he can only see Letang’s face for a couple seconds before he’s turned to make his way out of there in the opposite direction. It seems like he’s one of the stragglers. He looks crushed, red-eyed, and then he’s gone. Sid stares at the space he just vacated, feeling wretched for the briefest moment.

Then another body emerges from the door to fill that space, following the same route that Letang did. It’s Dupuis—he meets Sid’s eye on accident, just because when two humans are in a space together with no one else, they have an instinct to look at each other. 

“Hey, uh,” Sid coughs, and Dupuis stops before he has to turn. This feels colossally stupid, but he can’t not say something. “Go get it next year. You’ll get it.”

Dupuis casts a glance over Sid’s outfit, his bright, bleeding red Wings jersey. Sid gets the silly urge to try to cover it with his hands, as if that were possible—he probably sounds like such a douchebag, like he’s mocking the Pens’ loss. He wouldn’t blame Dupuis for socking him in the face, if that’s what happens. But Dupuis just spares him a bitter, rueful grin. “If we see your guys there, then you can count on it.” And then he’s gone like Letang.

Sid smiles. There’s a lot to admire about that team.

When he recovers from the momentarily debilitating shock of having exchanged actual words with an NHL player that he doesn’t even work for and remembers that Claude has without a doubt witnessed all of this, he turns his head slowly. Claude has a hand over his own mouth to keep in giggles of secondhand embarrassment. “You are,” he chokes, “such a loser nerd. Wow.” But after he gets a few more laughs out, he admits, “But as much as I hate the Penguins, that _ was _ kind of cool.”

The door on the other end of the hall bursts open, and people start flooding out of the visitors’ locker room in waves, players, family members, staff, media, every one of them doused and dripping in champagne. They’re taking this thing back to Detroit.

Detroit, where there’s a party to last all summer waiting for them. As for Sid and Claude, their internship is over just like the season is, but Claude was told when the Wings reached the Cup Final that if they won, he’d be hired to assist with work on a little documentary film the team is producing for DVD release about returning to glory as Cup champions; he’s climbing the ranks, as it were. So it looks like Claude is definitely staying in town for the summer. And Sid is staying in town for the summer too, because it’s Detroit, where Sid has _ friends _ like Flower and Hilary, and—he glances at Claude, his hair growing out greasy again, his eyes set right on Sid’s—he has a first love too. 

“Come on,” Claude says, nodding toward the door. “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sid’s crush on Steve Yzerman is [real](https://youtu.be/ndrWnZLuOMI?t=232). He’s been referred to as a [“big Yzerman guy.”](https://youtu.be/8RfFhGpaAOU?t=68)
> 
> Claude really does stan Thank God I'm A Country Boy. [Watch it and weep.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ssv1rYHS4)
> 
> There really is a [lil movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUeLLnnV6dE) on the Wings' 2007-08 season and championship.
> 
> And an only tangentially related link because I just love it so much and I somehow had never seen it until a few days ago: [what it's like to witness Claude attending a sports game as a fan.](https://twitter.com/fakelavy/status/797871882812784640)
> 
> I'm on tumblr as [quickxotic](https://quickxotic.tumblr.com/) as always!


End file.
